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I have a garden and consider the same issues as you, but where I live in Australia, the summers are becoming hot enough that many things are difficult to grow.
by prawn 7y ago
I have a garden and consider the same issues as you, but where I live in Australia, the summers are becoming hot enough that many things are difficult to grow. The changing climate could well hurt the amateur as much as the full-time professionals who have time/means to adapt.
In the space of 2-3 years, I went from being able to grow countless giant zucchini effortlessly, to now struggling to get almost anything: pollen/stamen are too dry. Tomatoes don't set if over a certain temperature which is now often the case. Even if you cover everything with shadecloth, a heatwave of 40+C can fry plants. Corn this year all failed. I've had one modest zucchini. Most of my 40ish tomato plants went crispy. Five fruit trees failed to develop any fruit. Two that did developed mold patches quickly all the way up the tree. Only a couple of trees did well.
- pvaldes 7y agoMaybe you could try Okra or Eggplants
- prawn 7y agoTried Japanese eggplants but didn't enjoy them. Don't love eggplants in general either. I might try okra though. We have kids so anything that gets past them is favoured; they eat a lot of spinach and spring onions at least. Potatoes are obviously trivial, but they're so cheap to buy I figure it's barely worth tying up a garden bed for them. Currently growing beans, tomatoes, zucchini, lettuce, spinach, coriander, garlic, carrots, spring onions, rocket/arugula, chilli, chives, strawberries, basil, oregano, snow peas, sugar snaps, etc.
- dhruvkar 7y agoThis is scary. I'm just starting gardening and I've heard similar stories from other amateurs. Have you found any mitigative actions you can take to continue growing (shadecloth was new for me)?
- prawn 7y agoI don't bother growing things that will get smashed by bugs (broccoli, etc) - just too frustrating. Spinach and lettuce grows easily enough that the bugs can't beat it down. Garlic is easy and rewarding, though cloves might be puny. Zucchini worth trying though they quickly cop disease on the leaves in my experience. Carrots easy, though also cheap as hell to buy. Herbs are a no-brainer as bugs ignore them and they're expensive/annoying to buy each time you need a small amount. Tomatoes are a warzone with grubs or heat gunning for them but hard to resist trying to master them! Get a reliable watering timer. I've had them fail or kill batteries due to unreliable motors and by the time I've noticed, plants have been dead. That at least is a predictable and solvable problem. For shade, I have brackets down the side of my garden beds into which I can slot broom-handle style posts. Onto that, I slide a half-hoop of inch-thick irrigation pipe. Then I can clip shadecloth or bug/bird netting onto that as needed.
- dhruvkar 7y agoThese are really good tips. Where could someone go to learn about these intricacies? Or is experiential-only knowledge?
- prawn 7y agoI think it depends so much on where you are and how you work that you mostly have to learn it as you go. Some people have loads more time to weed and water and check on things. Others might not have time to even look at the garden for a few days. I used to marvel at my late grandfather's garden and had to remind myself that he had decades of experience honing what he grew and how he grew it, plus in retirement had all day to do it!
- asdkjh345fd 7y agoPeople have grown all those vegetables in summers with several 40+ degree heat waves since the 1930s at least. Most of the issues people are having are due to decreased moisture, which is because of soil destruction. Living soil holds massive amounts of water, dirt holds almost none.
- CalRobert 7y agoWe also changed countries and moved several degrees north, for similar concerns (among other reasons).